Decoding Bottlenecks in Mainstreaming Settings to Enhance Educational Quality for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Catherine O’Brien, Ph.D. Associate Professor-Gallaudet University

Thomas P. Horejes, Ph.DAssociate Provost-Gallaudet University

Agenda

• Relevance of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

• Understanding and decoding bottlenecks

• Group Activity

• Examining different types of knowledge as leverage to student learning

• Reflection and discussion

Two Research-Based Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Questions

•1) How does students’ prior knowledge affect their learning?

•2) How does the way students organize knowledge affect their learning?

Taxonomy of the three SoTL Questions

Figure: Taxonomy of revised SoTL-type questions

• Whataresomebottlenecksthatposeasthegreatesteffectfromintermediateprocessestoacademiccontent?Whatis?

• Whatarestrategiestominimizebottlenecksfromintermediateprocessestoacademiccontent?

What(doesnot)work?

• Whathappensiftheteacherincorporateddifferenttypesofstudentknowledgeinclasseswhenarrivingatacademiccontent?Whatcouldbe?

Bottlenecks = Liminal Space

KnowledgeBases Concepts

Knowledge Reconstruction

via Critical Thinking

Breakthrough of a concept

Intermediate Processes

Liminal space

Linguistic (epistemological) bottleneck if confined to one language

Research-Based Inquiries

Cultural Hegemony

Cultural Hegemony – Written and Spoken English

Manipulating the societal culture (i.e. beliefs, values, mores) so that its ruling-class is imposed as the societal norm, which every social class then perceives as a universally valid ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo—as natural, inevitable, and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class

Cultural Hegemony – ASL

Cultural Hegemony – Visual cues

• Cultural Hegemony = verb; ideology = noun

• Hegemony = parts of the car (i.e. engine, wheels, oil, gas)

• Ideology = the physical image of the car

Cultural Hegemony - Examples

• The food-coloring in water experiment

• Real life examples• English in the internet

• Not providing image description in Facebook photos to make accessible for deaf-blind

• American Education system

• Goffman’s “giving off” right now

3 Different types of Bottlenecks

1. Procedural Bottleneck: Unable to comprehend a disciplinary concept (tacit knowledge) also known as threshold concepts (i.e. literacy, systems content)

2. Emotional/Cognitive Bottleneck: Unable to “connect” to the classroom and the learning process

3. Linguistic & Cultural Bottleneck: Unable to comprehend academic knowledge due to language/cultural barriers

• For deaf students, languaculturaldeprivation occurs in all levels

Experiential Activity

• Divide into Groups of 4 with partners you do not know well.

• When I sign the color “PURPLE” you can begin

• You are going to Inquire about each others:• Personal Culture • Linguistic references • Academic Knowledge/Experiences

• Rules• No Speaking• No Writing• No Signing• You have 20 Minutes

Areas to Document via Intermediate Processes: Types of Knowledge that Lead to School Knowledge

Banks, J.A. 1996. The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and Multicultural Education. In J.A. Banks, ed., Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (pp. 1 – 29). New York & London: Teachers College

5 Types of Knowledge

1. Personal/ Cultural

2. Popular

3. Mainstream Academic

4. Transformative Academic

5. School Knowledge

Types of Knowledge: Personal/ Cultural

Personal/Cultural = The concepts, explanations, and interpretations that students derive from personal experiences in their homes, families, and community cultures.• tends to be negatively sanctioned as too individualistic or ignored totally;

• lack of deaf culture in mainstream schools;

• deaf culture is in many ways ethnocentric

Types of Knowledge: Popular

Popular = The facts, concepts, explanations, and interpretations that are institutionalized within the mass media that are a part of popular culture (Movies, music, and social media)

Types of Knowledge: Mainstream Academic

Mainstream Academic = The concepts, paradigms, theories, and explanations that constitute traditional Western-centric knowledge in history and in social sciences

Types of Knowledge: Transformative Academic

Transformative Academic = The facts, concepts, paradigms, and explanations that challenge mainstream academic knowledge and expand and substantially revise established canons – a scientific revolution occurs (Visual Language and Learning Lab -VL2, content in bilingual teaching)

Types of Knowledge: School Knowledge

School Knowledge = The facts, concepts, generalizations, and interpretations that are presented in textbooks by teachers (Any United States History Book)

Knowledge as Social Constructs

• Students bring their social constructions & ideology in the classroom, but little are they conscious about this process as well as the failure of teachers to identify the “intermediate” and cultural processes occurring

• (De)(Re)constructing their knowledge = identifying what “works” in cooking

• How can the students expect to fully grasp some important concepts that are brought to the course without understanding their own personal experiences – both themselves and from the teacher’s perspective?

Challenges In K – 12 Deaf Education

• We do not engage in personal/cultural and transformative knowledge in deaf education especially in mainstreaming schools

• Standardized tests do not value personal/cultural & transformative knowledge; causes linguistic bottlenecks (and maybe other types) for deaf students whose L1 language is ASL

• Need to incorporate more deaf epistemologies and ways of knowing, teaching and learning; what is needed is a scientific revolution

• Lack of Visual-Spatial Intelligence “involves sensitivity to color, line, shape, form, space, and the relationships that exist between these elements.

It includes the capacity to visualize, to graphically represent visual or spatial ideas, and to orient oneself appropriately in a spatial matrix” (Armstrong, 1993, 2). These ideas become three-dimensional.

How Does ASL Contribute?

What can we do to reduce inequality in the classroom?• Diverse ways to arrive at critical thinking• Develop systematic ways to make clear to students what preliminary,

intermediate & expert identification of a concept via critical thinking looks like?

• Paying attention to the intermediate process that arrives to that point• Capitalize on cultural/personal knowledge as equally (if not more)

important than other types of knowledge• Self-examining ourselves as teachers and pedagogical assumptions &

“choices”• How we frame our course design has implications on student knowledge• Developing alternative ways to demonstrate student knowledge and

preference on assignments

Building SoTL one step at a time…

Gather Intermediate Processes of mediated knowledge occurring

Identifying/documenting knowledge(s): DeConstructingKnowledges

Evidence of successful teaching moment: ReConstructingKnowledges

Reflections• Many liminal spaces/bottlenecks in each discipline, but are interconnected (i.e.

math is different than sociology)

• Some lean toward threshold conceptual bottlenecks, others align to more tacit knowledge bottlenecks (Cognitive & & Linguistic)

• Sensorial Commons: Transforming (or decoding?) liminal spaces in visual learning and linguistic diverse spaces (environments?)

• Creating a space of a “sensory commons,” Deaf Space classroom ecology is designed to maximize classroom’s sense of community and engagement.

• The social dynamic of sitting in a circle or triangle versus a rectangle has far reaching implications for teaching, learning, and engagement. In a circle, everyone is invited into a communal conversation if they so wish (Brookfield & Preskill, 2005)

• Encultured/emic v. accultured/etic students (Erting)

• Classroom as ecological site of culture “occurring” (Gallego et al)

Discussion

• In your classroom/school, what do you feel are bottlenecks that prevent student’s intermediate processes to arrive at academic content?

• What types of knowledge do you feel is prevalent and missing in your classroom/school?

• What is one thing right now that you can do to prepare deaf students for academic success?